Silver Vigilante has been somewhat busy with numerous projects, such as BitcoinATM, Gold Silver Bitcoin & Bitcoinomics, A Bitcoin Textbook.

I 100% intend to return to the topic of silver over the next month…

I appreciate your patience.

Here is the table of contents for Bitcoinomics.

1. Introduction
2. Who Is Bitcoin?
3. What Is Bitcoin?
4. Historical Precedents
5. Bitcoin Fundamentals
6. The Market
7. Getting Started With Bitcoin
8. Using Bitcoin In Business
9. Responsibility & Bitcoin
10. Bitcoin Uses
11. The Future of Money & Property
12. Bitcoin Mining
13. Hacking Bitcoin
14. Bitcoin Fork
15. Varying Levels Of Legality
16. Bitcoin Trading Price
17. A Menu of Cryptograhic Currencies
18. Bitcoin Business Ideas
19. Conclusion

The post Coming Soon: Bitcoinomics appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

The bill passed by the Cypriot parliament enables the central bank governor and finance minister to take measures stemming capital flows, as the world knows. The generic legislation allows the country’s top finance and monetary officials to impose measures ranging from daily ATM withdrawals to freezing domestic interbank lending, suspending direct-debit orders and converting checking accounts into time deposits. The legislation allows the finance minister or central bank government to “take whichever restrictive measure [they] consider necessary under the circumstances, for reasons of public order and/or public security.”

From WSJ:

By Matina Stevis and Joe Parkinson

Q: What actions does Cyprus need to take to enforce the capital controls adopted with last week’s legislation?

A: The Cypriot parliament passed enabling legislation last week, giving the central-bank governor and the finance minister the power to take measures to stem capital outflows. The legislation is quite generic and allows the country’s top finance and monetary officials to impose measures ranging from daily ATM withdrawals to freezing domestic interbank lending, suspending direct-debit orders and converting checking accounts into time deposits. The law allows the finance minister or, when relevant, the central-bank governor, to “take whichever restrictive measure [they] consider necessary under the circumstances, for reasons of public order and/or public security.” A decree enacting this bill and laying out the specific details of the capital controls is yet to be issued.

Q: What capital controls are already being enforced (e.g. border checks, ATM limits)

A: Customs officials said border guards at the counrtry’s air and sea ports have been instructed to check baggage and monitor whether travelers are taking more than €10,000 (about $13,000) out of the country. Any amount above that €10,000 threshold can be confiscated. Daily ATM limits vary: at Popular Bank of Cyprus (Laiki), cash-machine withdrawals have been capped at €100 euros; at Bank of Cyprus, the limit is €120. Other ATMs are operating normally.

Q: Can people bypass controls and ATM withdrawal limits by crossing over to Northern Cyprus?

A: At present, border guards at the main pedestrian crossing point on Ledra Street aren’t searching people unless they have intelligence indicating that someone is carrying a large amount of cash. That could change.

Q: How are the ATM limits and bank closures affecting businesses, such as hotels?

A: Many businesses are struggling to understand how the capital-control measures will affect their day-to-day operations, such as their access to cash, meeting payroll and other obligations, as well as the longer-term impact of the financial crisis on their businesses. “In two-three days we need to pay our employees. Will we be able to do that? What happens with the workers who get paid via Laiki?” asks Michalis Pilikos, the president OEB, Cyprus’s national business association. “For many this will be a major wound, we’ll see immediate mass layoffs and closures.” In the meantime, many small businesses are refusing to accept credit-card transactions of electronic transfers out of uncertainty over when banks will reopen and concern they may not be able to recoup the funds. Some larger businesses, like Nicosia’s Hilton Hotel, still accept credit cards but not bank transfers.

Q: When are banks likely to reopen? What will happen when banks reopen? Will even small depositors have access to their deposits?

A: On Monday, March 25, banks were officially closed for a national holiday in commemoration of Greece’s Independence Day. They have been closed since March 16. Banks are due to open Tuesday at 8:00 a.m., but there is some speculation that the extended bank holiday may yet stretch for another day or longer as Cypriot officials race to implement the new capital control measures. Officials are expected to have the capital-control measures in place before the banks reopen.

The post Cyprus Border Guards Confiscating Cash Over €10,000 appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

“We are looking to provide the people of Cyprus with liquidity at a time of extreme hardship for them.  We would be the only functioning ATM on the island,” Berwick said in discussions Monday with SV.

Bitcoin ATM’s technology is considered the world’s first Bitcoin ATM. With the capacity to accept cash and instantaneously send the appropriate amount of bitcoins to the customer, as well as accept bitcoins and send cash, the technology appears to be the first of its kind. This Bitcoin ATM was originally developed by Todd Bethel and other developers.

Apparently, however, the model has been further developed. The Bitcoin community will have the option to put in cash and get bitcoin out; send bitcoin and get cash out and even swipe a debit card, in the future. Other differences are that Berwick’s version of the technology features a touch screen application to enter in a Bitcoin address manually, if there is no QR code available, a Bitcoin address shortening service, as well as cold storage services for Bitcoin built into the ATM and available to users.

Bitcoin ATM is Berwick’s first foray into the world of Bitcoin, but it seems he is making quite the splash. The model on which Bitcoin ATM is based is an alternative to the Local Bitcoins service, in which individuals must meet meet each other in order to exchange bitcoin for cash. One fundamental problem with that model is that much of the population cannot feel comfortable meeting with strangers.

In his blog post at Dollar Vigilante, Berwick wrote:

ENTER THE WORLD’S FIRST OPERATIONAL BITCOIN ATM

Upon examination of the marketplace and many discussions with Justin O’Connell (TDV Newsletter & Gold Silver Bitcoin), as well as another key strategic partner of ours, I have decided to move forward with what I believe could be the next multi-billion dollar business venture: Bitcoin ATM.

But that isn’t all. It is wholly our intention at Bitcoin ATM to put the company in the right position to open its very first ATM in Cyprus. If we did this now, and we are moving quickly to make this so, we would be the only functioning ATM on the island.

BITCOIN ATM FUNCTIONALITY

At this moment in time, you can deposit fiat currency into Bitcoin ATM and receive bitcoins to your account. You can also send bitcoins and receive fiat currencies.

OWN YOUR OWN BITCOIN ATM’S – POSSIBLE BUSINESS VENTURE OF THE DECADE

Ever wish you had gotten involved in the early stages of the internet in 1994?  Or bought gold in 2000?  Or invested in Microsoft in the 80s?  I see bitcoin and things like Bitcoin ATM as being the next big thing.  And, this is not the first time I’ve recognized a massive paradigm shift as I did starting Canada’s largest financial website in 1994… and became a gold advocate early in the last decade and starting up The Dollar Vigilante in 2009 with a focus on protecting from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI)… something that is in full flight as people in Cyprus can attest.

As stated, we want to roll out these ATMs as quickly as possible.  Very obvious first locations would be in nations which are currently undergoing capital controls such as Argentina and Iran.  But, even more than that, there are communities of freedom minded individuals sprouting up all over the world.  A few bitcoin ATMs in the free state, New Hampshire, where thousands of freedom loving agorists have already moved is a no brainer.  Other areas that make complete sense include places like Chile where many are now gravitating as well as Cafayate in Argentina where Doug Casey has already formed his freedom loving expat community.

I am convinced bitcoin will be the currency of the future… and all the attacks on it by governments and central banks shows they know it.

If you are interested in getting more info on becoming a franchisee in a particular area and installing a Bitcoin ATM in that region, please contact us at bitcoinatm@bitcoinatm.com.  As well, as things grow – and I expect it to be rapid – we may accept investors who are interested.  You can contact us about that at the same email bitcoinatm@bitcoinatm.com.

The post TDV Media’s Jeff Berwick Opens First Bitcoin ATM…In Cyprus appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

The state-enterprise apparatus – mostly private interests using government to organize society –  creates arbitrage that would not otherwise exist.  Indeed, many of these arbitrages exist at the small business level, presenting entrepreneurs of the state-made landscape ways in which to make money.  Here are some examples of businesses for which we might thank the state in a sick Stockholm sense.

1. Offices of Certified Public Accountants Average Pretax Margin, 2003-2010: 16.5%

Everybody needs an accountant, no matter how the economy is doing. In fact, when it gets worse, you can count on the state to create this business opportunity.  Since 2008, an army of accountants has been made necessary to stem the tide of IRS auditors, especially if you have money. The low overhead, marketing scale and repetition of clientele makes it a potentially profitable niche. Already, if you earn more than $1 million per year, the likelihood of your being audited is 12 times more likely than one earning under $200,000. About one in every eight tax filers earning over $1 million or more were audited in 2011, which effectively doubled the rate at which this bracket was taxed in 2009. US citizens making over $1 million already shoulder nearly seventy percent of the nation’s tax burden.

1. Offices of Chiropractors: 15.3%

Though some believe chiropractors do more damage than good, there is no doubting their margins. What does the state have to do with backs? Well, we all surely remember our early days in the public indoctrination centers, as we wore backpacks that equated to sometimes more than 50% of our body weight. This is something my mother pointed out to me recently when I mentioned a sore back from exercising without stretching properly. By destroying money, some unfortunate souls are now forced to carry boxes of gold and silver across the globe to ensure they can maintain their lifestyle. In the inner-city, who knows how many backs have been thrown out ducking from state-sanctioned ghetto violence? Gary Gibson and I are forced to carry around NICKELS and DIMES, a circumstance that surely will lead us to long lives of massages and chiropractic care. And so, thank you State.

1. Other Accounting Services: 14.9%

State-filed paperwork is daunting. Everyone knows that. And now, more than ever, business owners have to stay ahead of the prying eyes of bureaucrats.  Various accounting, bookkeeping, billing and tax preparation services in any form should have relative job stability as the IRS hires thousands upon thousands of more workers.

1.  Tax Preparation Services: 14.7%

More taxes…

1.  Offices of Lawyers: 13.4%

So…People everywhere in the west are more desperate than they’ve been in recent memory, thanks to TEOTMSAWKI, making them more lawsuit-prone for sure. Authority figures, further, have as much hate for the general public as they once held for the ghetto only.

1.  Sales Financing 13.3%

When banks are sitting on reserves instead of lending to small businesses and families, sales financing companies grow in popularity. They lend money in order to provide collateralized goods through a contractual installment sales agreement, either directly from, or through, arrangements with dealers. If it were not for the State, of course, then there would be no such thing as banks to hoard cash and prevent honest, hardworking individuals from getting a fair loan.

1.  Portfolio Management: 12.2%

Drowned in an overdose of mainstream media malice, people love putting responsibility for their own lives in the hands of others. Their public indoctrination centers never taught them anything other than Keynesian political nonsense and the media has indoctrinated them into turning to the experts.

1.  Drilling Oil And Gas Wells: 12%

$10 billion-$52 billion in subsidies annually

1.  Lessors of Nonresidential Buildings (except Mini-warehouses):

Overinflated real estate bubble due to near-zero interest rates since 9/11?

1. 10.   Lessors of Miniwarehouses and Self-Storage Units: 11%

50%+ above the poverty line means plenty of goods aren’t being bought, leaving a backlog of inventory and state-sanctioned consumerism was destined to fill the self-storage unites of the future. Plus, all of those McDonald Mansion fantasies from the beginning of the century went quickly by the wayside. Surely, many such dwarf mansions were filled to the brim with needless stuff before its overly-optimistic occupants had to downsize.

These are merely a few of the options, amidst a sea of options, created benignly (?) by your governments to ensure that you can keep working very hard to prop up a government that does very little more than how Leo Tolstoy described such things in Myself, Sorry, Back:

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back. 

The post Arbitrage of State appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

Citizens of Cyprus, known as Cypriots, are finding out that their duly elected representatives have now sanctioned theft of their private bank accounts.

President Nicos Anastasiades first proposed the wealth confiscation this last Friday. Under his plan, parliament would levy a 6.75 % tax from all bank deposits of 100,000 Euro or less and 9.9% on bank deposits of more than 100,000 euro.

“The solution taken may be painful, but it was the only one” worth taking said President Anastasiades in regards to his proposal.

This is the first time that the IMF and the Eurozone have actually dipped into people savings accounts. It is the next stage in austerity that is affecting the world as the banking plunder continues.

The purpose of banking holidays is to stop any runs that my occur on a bank by holders that fear the bank will not be able to make good on their deposits or for people getting their money out before it is revalued.

Cypriots are making every attempt to avoid this new tax by going to ATM’s throughout the county to withdrawal as much money as possible. However, with banks in the country being closed, it is unlikely that depositors will be able to get any sizable amount of their money out before it is too late.

Holders of gold, silver, and Bitcoin in Cyprus do not have this problem though as they have hard assets in their possession at any given time and can use those assets to barter and trade with.

For everyone else it seems that they will have a portion of their wealth taken from them because they choose to have their wealth in the wrong currency. With all government in the world facing fiscal crisises like Cyprus sometime in the near future, this brand of wealth confiscation will evolve and continue. Hard physical assets do not have this problem.

Gold Silver Bitcoin “it’s your choice”

The post Guest Post: Cyprus Steals Bank Depositers Money? Not if You Have Gold Silver Bitcoin appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

For a complete listing of all of our beautiful antiques, please visit the Product Catalog, found at the top of the site.

Hexagonal Sterling Water Pitcher

The post Silver Vigilante Shop: Antiques, (Tinctures Coming Soon!) appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV legal correspondent, Jim Karger]

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone.” — Frederic Bastiat

Americans struggle.

Cars, houses, spouses, kids, jobs, bosses, and debt, to name a few, but they all boil down to one struggle: money. Or better said, the absence of money. Not enough money to buy a car, to take the wife to dinner, to send the kids to private school, to quit the crappy job, to shop like it was a sport, to take a vacation from a soul-dead existence, to pay off the credit cards, and the list goes on and on.

Someone needs to take responsibility. Someone needs to end the struggle.

Angel Adams insists on it. Watch her here:

Someone needs to step up, Angel says as she gestures across a sea of children, all her own.

Someone. Anyone.

Anyone, that is, but Angel Adams.

And most Americans, after watching Angel’s story, will convict her, and criticize her for being a leech on government’s largesse. What they cannot see is themselves in that video. Unfortunate since most Americans are not much different than Angel Adams.

What Angel is willing to say openly and without shame is that she wants someone else to pay.

And, so do a majority of Americans. They want someone to put their thumb on the scale of the market and tip the balance in their favor. They want something for nothing.

Bastiat was right when he observed “government as the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” And, it is not just welfare recipients who can’t make the connection between kids with no shoes and lying on the their backs getting banged like a gong and ending up with 15 children.

Most Americans are—let me search for the word—freeloaders. And most of those deny it. Indeed, a 2008 poll found that 57% of Americans denied ever using a government program. But when shown a list of 21 actual programs, including student loans and home-mortgage interest deduction, 94% of the deniers turned out to have bellied up to the pork-bar after all.

Who are they? They are us.

They are current Social Security recipients who, under no theory, have paid in near enough to justify the benefits they are receiving in the mail each month.

It is a General Public filled with so much fear and hate that they can’t get enough of the engorged war machine that spends more on “defense,” more properly called “war,” than the next 16 largest nations combined.

It is funding for the arts which means funding artists who can’t sell their paintings or pottery or music in the free market.

It is parents who want public parks and museums to babysit their children.

It is Medicare recipients who want someone to pay for their overpriced sick care.

It is Section 8 housing recipients who get a check for rent for an unlimited amount of time with no work requirement.

Bottom line? An estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau. In 2009, an estimated 46.5 million received Social Security; 42.6 million got Medicare; 42.4 million were having doctor and hospital bills paid through Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million enjoyed housing subsidies; and 3.2 million got Veterans’ benefits.

Others who find insufficient the benefits they can latch onto legally just game the system.

US households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes.

But before blaming it all on Angel Adams and the rest of the General Public who go to Disneyworld on food stamps, know that the hogs span every income level.

This includes homeowners who hump the mortgage interest deduction, 69% of which goes to those who earn $100,000 or more each year.

It includes all those who enjoy benefits from employer-provided retirement benefits, the contributions to which are deductible, and the taxes on those contributions and income from them delayed for years.

It is corporations, legal fictions that have no good reason to exist except to protect their owners from personal responsibility, with their heads in the federal feed bucket.

It is banks, themselves corporations, that have engaged in perhaps the most massive holdup in human history, bailed out by a government too afraid to take on the owners.

It is oil companies to whom Congress gave subsidies worth $30 billion over five years.

It is outright cash payments to business in the form of direct cash payments like those that have helped keep many renewable-energy projects afloat, including Solyndra to the tune of $535 million before it went bust.

It is corporate farmers who snort five billion dollars a year through rolled up hundred dollar bills, along with billions more in crop insurance and drought aid while the consumer gets bent over, e.g., US sugar companies enjoy import quotas which keep American sugar prices roughly twice as high as they otherwise would be.

It is the ethanol industry, a sacred cow of American politics whom the government rewards with the requirement that refiners blend billions of gallons of ethanol into gasoline annually, and sweetens the pot further with an ethanol tax credit. Again, the consumer gets it up his corn chute since forty per cent of corn acreage in the US now goes to make ethanol, jacking up food prices because less corn is grown to eat.

It is the drug industry, the biggest hog at the trough. Patent protection is worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year and growing as the range of things that can be patented expands dramatically.

Someone has to pay.

Yet, “someone” is always undefined. But we all know who someone is, right? Someone is government, our sugar daddy who can magically rain money on anyone anytime. The goal of “Let’s Play America” is simple and straightforward: get to the trough first, get your share, and fuck everyone else.

A relative handful know better. They know the collective snorting and sucking is not a prescription for success. And, they know there is no government. Rather, there is a cash machine labeled “government,” and behind that machine are millions of productive people who have their money stolen to fund the needs or wants of the unproductive. That theft manifests itself either as taxes or inflation.

The game is no longer won simply by stealing.  Nearly everyone is doing that.  The game is played well by stealing more than your neighbor.  The grand prize winners steal more than they pay, for now.

Which leads to the problems going forward.

The problem is not “someone” failing to take responsibility.

The problem is individual Americans not taking responsibility.

The problem is not seeing ourselves as hogs at the trough.

The problem is not seeing ourselves in Angel Adams.

The problem is there are fewer people from whom to steal.

The problem is the best and the brightest are leaving and taking their money with them.

The problem is the trade off of liberty, of the freedom not to be harassed, controlled and violated by government, for those who stay and play the game.

The problem is that most are neither smart enough nor gutsy enough to get themselves and their assets out in time.

They will be left to haggle over the ruins.

They will be held accountable.

Jim Karger is a lawyer, and frequent contributor to The Dollar Vigilante, who has represented American businesses against incursions by government and labor unions for 30 years. In 2001, he left Dallas and moved to San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of central Mexico where he sought and found a freer and simpler life for he and his wife, Kelly, and their 10 dogs. Karger’s website is www.crediblyconnect.com.

The post Guest Post: Someone Needs to be Held Accountable . . . and They Need to Pay appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

Be sure to weigh in. Personally, I like the new look.

From Forrst.com

Now on to the project…

I’m working on creating a new brand for bitcoin to help push it more mainstream. I want something with the modern and secure look of paypal.com or stripeup.com, with the openness and community feel of WordPress.org or mozilla.org. It needs to invoke trustworthiness and openness.

Right now there are multiple designs/logos representing bitcoin floating around the net, but none of them I feel represent all the values the bitcoin project is trying to represent.

I’m going for more simple design lately, trying to avoid the use of unnecessary gradients and shadows.

I’m looking for feedback and opinions regarding:

• Color and tone

• Preferred bitcoin “B” letter mark

• Thoughts on the branding elements

• Overall Design

• Improvements

The post Bitcoin Getting New Look? appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

The decision was made public Monday. Judge Patterson said that investors showed JP Morgan had the ability to influence prices, a fact the bank did not dispute, the investors “failed to show that the bank “intended to cause artificial prices to exist” and acted thereupon.

Investors accused banks in complaints filed from 2010 and 2011, accused banks of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profit via silver manipulation.

Investors had, in at least 43 complaints filed in 2010 and 2011, accused banks of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profit by manipulating silver prices.

Complaint sought triple damages for antitrust violations in silver distortion between 2007-2010, such as “fake” trades late in the day when market volume was thinnest.

The case is In re: Commodity Exchange Inc Silver Futures and Options Trading Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-md-02213.

Not long ago, Silver Vigilante and Silver Liberation Army organized a Facebook Bomb of JP Morgan. Here are some highlights:

The post NY JP Morgan Silver Manipulation Lawsuit Dismissed appeared first on Silver Vigilante.

Newspaper reports about how Germany had originally demanded a 40% overnight levy are not soothing the jitters in Club Med countries.

Bitcoin apps in Cyprus did not move. Perhaps that is because bank accounts were frozen on Saturday and it’s too late to shift money from them,

For anyone in doubt about the constitution of “global governance,” the Cyprus bailout offers a clear cut example.  Russia’s Finance Ministry is eager to pitch in a potential $23 billion in bailouts to get the names of Russians holding bank accounts in the tax haven Cyprus.  Breaking with prior agreements, Russia wishes to force Cyprus to hand over the names and account information. Estimates hold that between   €8 – €20 billion worth of Russian funds are held in Cypriot banks. The Swiss bank UBS agreed to US authorities’ demands to reveal its US customers, so why wouldn’t Cyprus to the Soviet Union?

Yahoo News points out:

Poignantly, the biggest top-10 free app climber on the iPhone during the crisis weekend was a game called Find a Way, Jose! It’s a puzzle where you need to free Jose from a seemingly impossible bind by shrewdly moving obstacles around; a goal that the government of Cyprus failed to achieve quite spectacularly.

“We don’t want a band-aid. We want something that lasts, that is durable and sustainable,” IMF Chief Christine Lagarde said.

That certainly isn’t what the ECB and IMF are promoting.

As a commenter at Dollar Vigilante notes:

The depositors are being ripped so as to reduce the liabilities of Cypriot banks, so the ECB is not seen to be on the hook for so much, since it is the ECB who will be providing the ‘funds’.
The ECB should have just said FU & let the Cypriot banks collapse. It has to at some point otherwise the ECB itself will be recognised as insolvent, like the FED etc.
That’s when the real fireworks start.

The post Bitcoin-Related Apps Spike In Spain Over Weekend, Alongside Cyprus appeared first on Silver Vigilante.